School work and underwear

One group of my students is complaining that I don't work them hard enough. Oh, really? Well, I can change that noooo problem. I lecture too much in class. I asked a question today that could have sparked a fun discussion, I think (Why do we wear costumes and uniforms? What's the difference? Is there one?) and a few girls answered and then it fizzled flat as a hot soda pop. So I had to lecture! Jeez! What do they want from me?!? My little froshies love me. Sniff. Maybe the others are still comparing me to last year's teacher, who's hard to live up to in some respects. I think it'll get easier when I can get them with Catcher in the Rye. That's certainly got a lot to talk about.

But next week we go to Stratford (Canada, not England) as a school to see a Shakespeare play and apparently it's a lot of fun. Mind you, it does include me on a charter bus with about 40 freshmen for 3 hours each way, but hey--that's why we have iPods and grownups to talk to. And DVD players.

Oh, and this was bizarro today: For some reason I can't quite figure out, we had a short presentation today in the chapel (our meeting place) on antique clothing. I guess it was historically significant and kind of nice not to have the run-of-the-mill boring assembly, and the girls did ooh and ahh over the clothes, which were those of a wealthy woman who lived during the early 20th century. Admittedly there were some beautiful and intricate dresses. I did have to laugh, however, at the zeal with which these women described hat pins and buttons. "Lovely, just lovely to wear to a tea party." But the fun part (and I use that in broad terms) was the description of the lingerie. This woman really knows her stuff--did you know that before the mid 1850s women wore nothing from the waist down under their clothes? Then they moved on to these drawers (see picture) which are split in the middle so if a woman needs to pee in the woods, she just squats and does her business--and when the woman said this, she mimed squatting right in the middle of the chapel. I think some of the male teachers had out-of-body experiences at that point. The best part was her asking what the underwear was called today and the gym teacher calling out, "Thongs!"...and then this same woman telling us she wore white cotton panties. You can't get THAT at a co-ed school.

Totally different note: Don't you love fall? There was that cool dark, cloudy sky last night and terrific wind...the kind of weather you don't get at any other time of the year. It's my absolute favorite. Makes me want to go apple picking! Yum!